How to elect Which Social Media Platform to Use for Your Business?

Success with social media marketing hinges on your decision about which networks to focus.

Choose the wrong system, and you could end up wasting your valuable time and resources with little to no gain. Choose too many networks, and you will spread yourself and your team too thin to be persuasive.

The solution is easy - make sure you only invest in the right social media networks for your business.

There's just one problem.

How Do You understand Which Network Is Appropriate for Your Business?

There is no deficit of social media networks, and a new one appears to pop up nearly all day. There's social media site for just about everything you can imagine, even knitting! :)

Choosing the best network for your business is a daunting task. However, I am going to walk through a 3-step process that you can use to narrow down your list and ensure you are focusing your resources where you will get the biggest smack for your buck.

Like best things in marketing, it all starts with your customer.

Step 1: Create Your Customer Personas

The very first step is to identify whom you are trying to aim with your social media marketing.

Alternatively, who is your ideal customer?

The intention here is to create your customer personas, which describe the age range, occupation, marital status, # of kids, education level, questions, interests, problems, and any other relevant information.

Even if you have a good idea for whom you are targeting, take a moment to write this down. Every business will have numerous customer personas, and it is detracting to know them to assure your marketing to the proper people.

Before I proceed on, let's address one of the most frequently asked questions, "What about B2B marketing?" There is no customer persona for B2B (business to business) marketing by default means, right?

WRONG!

Even B2B marketing is targeting individuals. There's no such thing as marketing to business. Your marketing message must resonate with the people that make the buying decisions in the company you are aiming.

With that significant stride complete, we can move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Match Your Personas to Social Media Sites

The next step is to match your customer personas with the suitable social media sites. There's no point investing in a social media network that does not have your ideal clients, right?

To complete this step, we must figure out the demographic breakdown of all the major social media networks. Luckily, this research was done by Sprout Social.

Carefully review the demographics of the social media sites to see which of them are most appropriate for whom you are trying to target. For example, you will notice right away that Pinterest users are predominantly women. Only 17% of male internet users are on Pinterest versus 45% of female users. So if you are ideal customers are men, Pinterest is not a good fit.

You will also notice that Instagram skews to a much younger audience. 

Another key takeaway from this research is the fact that Facebook is by far the largest social media network. 1.15 billion daily active people use Facebook, and there is no demographic that is not on Facebook. Every demographic, from youngster to over-65-year-olds, has an account on Facebook.

That means every business should start social media marketing on Facebook and then expand to the next most appropriate network.

Now that we know which sites we will be focusing on, it is time for step 3.

Step 3: Ratify You Have the Resources

The final step is to ratify you have the resources to enlist your optimal customers on each of the social media sites you picked in step 2 above.

Let's begin with Facebook since every business should have a Facebook existence. To frame your Facebook audience and keep them engaged, you will need to post updates. What will you need to post updates? Here are some ideas:

-Helpful tips 

-Industry updates 

-How-to information 

-Inspirational quotes 

-Relevant jokes 

-Pictures of you and your team 

-Answers to FAQs 

Easy questions that elicit a response to outset a debate. That is a short list that will need to be fleshed out based on exactly who you are targeting. The goal here is to assure you have the resources to engage with your audience, not to create your content journal.

If in step 2 you determined that Pinterest & Instagram be an enormous apt for whom you are targeting, then it should be obvious that you need to have a steady supply of images to post. If you do not, then you will not be able to stay active for long.

At this point, you should have a list of appropriate social media sites for your business and a good idea to hold your audience engaged month after month.

All you need now is a solid plan to execute.